Throughout this quarter, my peers and I were invited to complete an action project. This project has three key goals: to create and implement a response to the course material, create an offering to the larger community, and to integrate a reflective component in both inception and implementation. My group’s final product after extensive deliberation is a website about climate refugees.
Many nations instill a notion of inalienable rights in their citizens, and these concepts of freedom are extended to the right to develop. However, most people who operate under this freedom framework would agree that your freedom ends when it hinders the freedom of another. So if one (or multiple) country’s development comes at the cost of the livelihood of another country’s, doesn’t the party who infringed on the latter’s freedom indicate that former owes something to the latter? Climate refugees serve as both a warning and a glimpse into everyone’s rapidly approaching future. While it can be difficult to relate to experiences that are not yet your own, it is important to recognize our role in present our species as a whole spawned together.
Our concept of freedom must be integrated into a system of sacrifice. Recognizing that giving back is not a favor, but an obligatory response to harm that we have contributed in causing. Paul Wapner shared a story from his research about a farmer from Uttarakahand. As Wapner was leaving, the farmer told him that the US “shouldn’t pity him or the [others suffering from the effects of climate change]. Everyone, sooner or later, was going to be in the same boat. As he put it, if climate change had come to rural India, it will eventually come to America. He wished [Wapner] luck.” As an integrated system, assisting one component of the system helps the whole.
References:
Climate Refugees UW website, https://climaterefugeesuw.weebly.com
Wapner, Paul, “Climate Suffering,” Global Environmental Politics, MIT, May 2014.